IBM, Yahoo Launch Free Enterprise Search Tool — IBM and Yahoo have developed a free, entry-level, enterprise search application that at least one analyst believes will seriously disrupt the low-end segment of this market where Google has been selling many of its Mini search devices.

Putting TechCrunch UK On Hold — TechCrunch UK, just a few months old, has been tremendously successful in creating a community for local UK & Ireland Entrepreneurs. However, today I put the blog on hold and terminated our relationship with editor Sam Sethi.

LE WEB 3 — Got back to London from Paris at lunchtime. — I had a superb time at Le Web 3. Thank you, Loic and Geraldine Le Meur, for putting on such a good show. And thanks also to Jeff Clavier for helping out. Always a pleasure to see you guys. — Here are my thoughts, in no particular order:

Apple denies download sales fall — Apple has denied a report which claims US sales at its iTunes Music Store fell by 65% in the first half of 2006. — Research group Forrester said it was too soon to say whether its findings showed that buyers were "reaching their saturation level for digital music".

Microsoft unveils public robotics software — Microsoft on Wednesday took the wraps off its first commercial operating system for robots, with hopes of paving the way for a broader robotics industry and taking a central role in its development. — The technology, called Microsoft Robotics Studio …

Skype's Free Phone Call Plan Will Soon Have Annual Fee — Skype, the Internet calling service owned by eBay, said Tuesday that as of Jan. 1 it would begin charging $30 a year for unlimited calls to landline and mobile phones within the United States and Canada. Those calls had been free since last spring.

Skype Announces New Skype Unlimited Calling Plan — Offers 12 Months of Unlimited Skype Calls to Any Phone Within the US and Canada for a Flat Annual Rate — Skype, the global Internet communications company, is now offering U.S. and Canadian consumers the new Skype Unlimited Calling plan …

Yahoo Dethroned By MySpace — Fox Interactive Media, largely thanks to MySpace, has edged into No. 1 for Internet page views. — Yahoo is getting good at being No. 2. News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media has now edged the search giant out of its long-held perch at the top position for Internet page views.

Nifty Toolbar upgrades for Firefox — Ever since the latest version of the Google Toolbar for IE came out, Firefox users have been asking when they'll see the same new features in their favorite browser. Well, we've been hard at work on a new version of the Toolbar for Firefox …

WHAT WOULD RADICAL TRANSPARENCY MEAN FOR WIRED? (PART 2) — In the previous post, I described how the media landscape is changing, starting with reader expectations. In this post I'll describe what that might imply for a media organization like ours. If the key word is "participation", how could we encourage that to the fullest?

Pluck, tag and save the good stuff from YouTube videos — Ever wish you could show a friend the really cool part of a YouTube video without making them sit through all the rest? That's the idea behind Scenemaker, which lets you bookmark, tag and share individual scenes within videos.

Apple May Be Carrier for IPod Phone, Analyst Says (Update1) — Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) — Apple Computer Inc. may serve as its own wireless carrier if it delivers an iPod-based cell phone next year and rely on the company's network of retail stores to sell service contracts for the device, UBS AG said.

Yahoo Answers Birthday: One Year Old — Yahoo Answers, arguably one of Yahoo's most successful products of the year, has turned one today. Yahoo has listed The Best of Answers 2006 showing off some of the best user generated questions and answers for the year. You can get a free gift from Yahoo for their birthday over here.

Interview: Wil Shipley of Delicious Monster — With the hit that is Delicious Library making its rounds around Mac software land and Delicious Library 2 on the way, Delicious Monster and Omni founder Wil Shipley has been, to put it lightly, a busy guy. We were able to catch him for a few words …

Verizon's EV-DO Rev. A network launches Friday? — Sprint may have beaten big ol' Red this time around, but Verizon's not about to let a little friendly rivalry get them down. Rumor has it that the nation's largest CDMA carrier begins rolling out its EV-DO Revision A network this Friday …

AOL: The purge goes high — The purge goes high — AOL's new boss, Randy Falco, may not know how to use IM, but The TV industry veteran is an impressively bloody hatchetman. Among the rumored casualties from today's layoffs at Time Warner's AOL online unit, four senior managers …